Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

Source: Search Engine

Done with with a touch of humour this piece brings up a few good points. All the more reason more people should subscribe to Search Engine podcasts.

He was my age. I’m not sure what he studied, and what he did to make a living. But on his time off he was a blogger, and criticized Iranian society and government openly. Last year he was sentenced to two years in prison for “insulting the authorities”. And now he is dead. Just before the new Iranian year. Many bloggers are lamenting his loss: here, here, and here and here’s an English language post. And the interview with Omidreza’s lawyer is here.

Balatarin ( Farsi: بالاترین ) is a farsi website dedicated to social information sharing and link aggregation. This site is much like digg but mostly for the Iranian internet sphere. (wikipedia article)

A couple of days ago, the site was hacked (most likely their DNS or the registrar info) and suddenly the importance of this site to Iranian internet users became quite apparent.

Well, the good news is that the site owners have now gained control of the site. It will come back soon, but in the meantime here’s the message on the front page:

After today science will have a chance at discovering great unknowns and proving or disproving some of the most fundamental theories in physics. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will go online in CERN. Although I have no expertise in this subject matter I will try my hand at a quick summary of the most important points. Follow the jump for a brief introduction and a very nice video explaining it all in rap!

Continue reading →

If you’re reading this and you use bitTorrent, beware! ISPs are now starting to throttle and even block bitTorrent traffic.

And wouldn’t you know it, my ISP is on that list. So now I wonder what will happen to me considering I downloaded ( and was sharing ) a 30GB file on bitTorrent last month!

For the past 2 or 3 days the western media has been satisfying their macabre obsession with a murder case of a little girl. The news that a possible suspect is arrested has been plastered all over newspapers, and TV. It turns out today that the confessions they got from the guy seem very contradictory with facts. No matter, the brave western media marches on in search of truth. The little girl’s face is on all daily newspapers and everyone is searching for answers.

Meanwhile the death toll in Lebanon hits 1,300 and more than a third are children. Perhaps if the children in Lebanon all had Anglo-Saxon names, and were aspiring beauty queens we would see their photos on the dailies here in the west.

Recommended reading for today : Awakening the Resistance

I had known about this for a while now, but the reason I’m mentioning it now, is because not only did the dude make his money but his ideas have spawned a string of copy cats. It’s interesting how a simple – stupid, even – idea can fool people and make someone a lot of money. Why didn’t I think of something like that?
In case, you don’t feel like following the links: this guy was auctioning the pixels on his webpage, and he made a lot of money!

“In some neighbourhoods, rescue teams crouch for fear of snipers.” — CTV News
Tonight I saw footage of U.S. troops trying to evacuate people from New Orleans at gunpoint! I have no comments just watch the clip!

A giant virus was discovered that is as big as a small bacterium and may be an entirely new form of life. Scientists succeeded in cultivating square, salt-loving bacteria called Walsby’s square archaeon. Two new AIDS vaccines failed to work. The genome of a Hereford cow was sequenced. Cone snails, it was found, catch fish by firing a hollow posion tooth through a long proboscis. Chinese scientists unveiled a microscopic swimming robot that they said could be used someday to deliver drugs or to clear clogged arteries, and Korean and Italian researchers developed a tiny robot with multiple legs designed to crawl through a patient’s guts. Scientists with NIZO Food Research developed an artificial throat that breathes, salivates, and swallows. A new study found that injecting mice with embryonic stem cells can partially correct congenital heart defects in their babies. Another study suggested that vitamin supplements could increast the risk of dyning from cancer. Japanese surgeons gave a burn victim a new face made from a single sheet of skin taken from his back. A quadriplegic man succeeded in checking email and playing computer games via a microchip embedded in his brain. American researchers developed a device that uses spinach to generate electricity. Canadian researchers cliamed to have developed a cure for the common cold. California banned necrophilia. Volcanic ash rained down on Tokyo.

– Harper’s Magazine, December 2004